HAVANA, Cuba. – I suppose that some seasoned readers will be thinking, after reading the title, that these lines and the image that accompanies them do not go beyond a flirtation with Magritte, with that René Magritte who he showed us a pipe to later warn us, and without the slightest modesty, that everything we were looking at was not a pipe, but the image of a pipe and, to be even more precise, the representation of a pipe…
And the greatest truth is that what we are looking at is not a pipe, and it is not even the image of a pipe, much less the representation of a pipe, but I think I am not wrong if I warn the reader that this image could be understood. as the representation of a country and, to be even more precise, it could be understood as a very faithful and indisputable representation of what could become, or already is, that country in which I have lived for 60 years, and which HE called Cuba.
And after all this crazy insistence, after the long tirade and the gibberish, I suppose the reader is frightened and presuming a huge imbalance in my head; and it is probably so, but I still recommend that you put your eyes once again on the image, and look at the car and conjecture, infer, deduce what those other years must have been like, those from a while ago, the younger years of the country, I meant the car.
Look at the car, imagine it a time ago; go back over the continent and the content. Imagine his younger years, intuit the splendor he must have exhibited. Go back in time, imagine your wheels, your bearings. Investigate its uses, imagine, imagine, imagine the years of that old and dilapidated car (country should I write?). Imagine the splendor it must have had; shiny wheels, the neat and careful upholstery, as if it were a good country, but look closely.
Imagine, imagine, look at the car and think, tell yourself if what you see is not the portrait of a country, of a country that is the continent of all that rubbish that is stored in it. Look at that old, beat-up car and tell me if that doesn’t sound like the image of this country. Look at that continent of junk, stare at the car and you will have the image of the country, of this country: rust, destruction, chaos. And will we be that junk containing that continent that was once a healthy car in motion?
What are we? What will we be? Scrap metal and nothing else? Stare at the rust that eats and destroys and that is the image of a countryfrom this country. Look at the continent, look at all the content, the junk that fills it and the junk it contains. Look at everything you’ve been receiving and keeping for years. Look at everything you’ve been getting that turns you off. Look at the rot in the country, sorry, in the car.
Look at the death rattles of the continent, look at the agonies of content. That old, beat-up car had better days; healthy days, neat days, but a commander arrived and the destruction was done, the rust was done and the filth filled all the spaces of the car that was young, I meant of the country that is now old, and dilapidated, and rusty, although it was young and beautiful… and even without having loved, without having suffered so much. Look at the country, look at it well in its last days, and wait for the disaster… and we will die together… or we will be saved. Let’s decide!
